SpaceX preps its Falcon Heavy, while its competition tests a manned space plane.

As the SpaceX Dragon prepares to depart the International Space Station, Sierra Nevada sends a full-scale Dream Chaser up in the air for the first time.

Several big developments have taken place in the fledgling commercial space industry this past week, with big news from both SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Corporation, the builders of the Dream Chaser reusable winged vehicle.

SpaceX sells their first heavy lifter

SpaceX announced yesterday that it had signed its first launch contract for the Falcon Heavy, a vehicle that's still under development. The company plans to test the new heavy-lift rocket later this year.

The Falcon Heavy is essentially three Falcon 9 rockets ganged together to create the most powerful production rocket since the Saturn V. The launcher's secret is that it cross-feeds fuel and oxidizer from the two side boosters to the center rocket as they ascend. When the two side boosters separate, the center rocket, now basically a single Falcon 9, continues with a full load of fuel and oxidizer.

Falcon Heavy is rated for 53 metric tons of payload to Low Earth Orbit. The advertised price for a Falcon Heavy brings its cost below $1000 per pound, a milestone that has taken on aspects of the holy grail within the launch industry. SpaceX has already planned for all three lower stages of the Falcon Heavy to be reusable, which would reduce the price even further.

The new contract is with Intelsat, the world's largest satellite company, and represents a major victory for the young launch provider. Intelsat began as a consortium of 11 countries in 1964, cooperating to build a satellite communications network in geosynchronous orbit. The consortium grew to over 100 countries over the next forty years, and was finally privatized in 2001, keeping the name Intelsat as its corporate title.

Neither company has announced which satellite will travel aboard a Falcon Heavy; although Intelsat has several candidates in its pipeline. Intelsat likes to split backup satellites between different launch providers; it remains to be seen whether SpaceX's markedly lower prices will affect Intelsat's launch calculus.

Dragon packed and ready to go home early

NASA TV will begin coverage tonight at 2:30 AM Eastern Time of the departure of the SpaceX Dragon from the International Space Station. Although the Dragon spacecraft was originally slated for an 18-day first mission, the unpacking and repacking process has gone more quickly than expected. Dragon is now ready to begin its swift journey home. The reusable capsule is due to splash down in the Pacific Ocean Thursday morning not very far from the coast of California. From there Dragon will be brought back to the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, where it will be cleaned up and given a new disposable heat shield for its next re-entry. The "trunk", Dragon's unpressurized section, will separate from the spacecraft and burn up in the upper atmosphere.

According to a NASA press brief, Dragon is bringing home a toolbox, fluid modules, stowage trays, cables, a keyboard and data recordings from experiments conducted aboard the Station. Other returns include parts from various experiments and cartridges from investigations done on metal rods in the Material Science Research Rack. NASA has not stated where all the dirty laundry, a serious matter aboard a space station, will go.

Dragon's return capability is key not only for cargo but for humans. Not counting this demonstration flight, two cargo Dragons will fly in each of 2012, 2013 and 2014, giving SpaceX at least seven cargo Dragon flights and twenty Falcon 9 flights before 2015. SpaceX's President, Gwynne Shotwell, stated in the pre-launch press conference that the company hopes to have manned Dragons launching by early that year.

Dream Chaser takes its first test flight

Sierra Nevada Corporation's air tests of its Dream Chaser crew vehicle would normally have received top billing this week had they not been slightly overshadowed by all the (admittedly historic) Dragon hoopla. According to an article at Parabolic Arc (with great video), residents of Jefferson County near Denver were treated to the sight of a Sikorsky Sky Crane flying the Dream Chaser test hardware above the Broomfield airport on Tuesday. The tests were being done in anticipation of Dream Chaser's Free Flight Tests later this year.

SNC announced yesterday that Dream Chaser had completed four more of its CCDev2 (Commercial Crew Development Round 2) milestones. The four milestones included testing of the Separation System that releases Dream Chaser from its Atlas V booster, Main Landing Gear Drop Testing, Captive Carry Interface Testing, and the captive carry flight test readiness review, the carrying aircraft in this case being the sky crane. Evidently after the Captive Carry FTRR Sierra Nevada didn't waste any time getting the bird into the air. Dream Chaser will soon complete its 18 milestones for this round of NASA's Commercial Crew competition. The last test is an optional Milestone 19, a free flight from a carrier aircraft.

The reusable Dream Chaser has the unique ability to return injured astronauts at low accelerations back from a space station. The spacecraft is a reincarnation of NASA's HL-20 crew vehicle, repackaged with SNC's hybrid rocket system and modernized electronics. Dream Chaser has blown through its milestones fairly quickly, garnering fans not only for its safety and reusability, but also for its mini-Shuttle-like appearance.

~117 million for a full payload. That's a mite bit cheaper than NASA's launching?

It's my understanding that you'll need quite a bit more than that 117 million to get into space. From what I have read, SpaceX quotes only the cost of assembling, fueling, and launching the rocket, they *do not* include payload integration and support, which has to be negotiated extra. Part of the delta in costs between SpaceX and the incumbents is that the incumbents include those costs up front. That said, those costs probably aren't nearly great enough to make up that delta either. SpaceX is genuinely cheaper. The shuttle was ridiculously overpriced on a $/kg basis, but then again the shuttle also had capabilities that no one else can or likely ever will be able to match within the next few decades.

Interesting how the Shuttle concepts of, reusable, and "flying brick" get reused.

For a spacecraft, the shuttle was pretty damn aerodynamic. A 1000 mile unpowered crossrange landing ability is amazing to the point of being wildly excessive.

It was. That crossrange was mandated by the DoD who wanted to fly once-around missions with the shuttle ejecting some payload on the first orbit and landing again after that orbit about 45 minutes after launch.

Interesting how the Shuttle concepts of, reusable, and "flying brick" get reused.

For a spacecraft, the shuttle was pretty damn aerodynamic. A 1000 mile unpowered crossrange landing ability is amazing to the point of being wildly excessive.

It was. That crossrange was mandated by the DoD who wanted to fly once-around missions with the shuttle ejecting some payload on the first orbit and landing again after that orbit about 45 minutes after launch.

Needless to say the shuttle never flew such a mission profile.

Not just any payload on any orbit, but specifically offensive or intelligence related payloads on a polar orbit from Vandenberg AFB during war with the Soviet Union. The once around and 1000 mile crossrange requirements were to prevent the shuttle from having to overfly the Soviet Union and be subject to an ASAT shootdown.

"Intelsat began as a consortium of 11 countries 1964,""Neither company has announced which satellite will travel aboard a Falcon Heavy; although there are several candidates,"

Serious editing fail.

Intelsat is now one company, as was clearly explained in the paragraph you pulled a sentence out of the middle of. Space X is also a company. Neither one has announced what satellite will go up on Falcon Heavy's first launch. Editing failure averted... by not editing pieces out of the article and pretending they contradict one another.

Props also to the Aerospace Department at the University of Colorado - Boulder for their work on the Dream Chaser! Many grad students, several friends of mine, have worked on that with great esteem, and it was nice to see the Dream Chaser leave the school for testing a few weeks ago!

I love the idea of commercial space-flight. I've got romantic notions of space travel well entrenched after reading the Foundation series. Now all we need to do move freely between stars and predict everything with SuperMaths!

This is awesome, now where is my flying car? I'm sure I left it around here somewhere

@another ars account:

I believe XolotlLoki was pointing out typographical errors:

"Intelsat began as a consortium of 11 countries *in* 1964,""Neither company has announced which satellite will travel aboard a Falcon Heavy; although there are several candidates," *where is the rest of this sentence? Usually they don't end with a comma.*

You would think with all the money we have been pouring into ramjets and scramjets we would have a cheaper mode of sending payloads into low earth orbit. For as a milestone as this is in pop culture as an engineer its pathetic we are still sending things in space the same ways we have since the the beginning of the cold war.

Just a comment about mixing metric and imperial... that's what caused the Mars rover problem. When Ars is writing articles, would you please use one method of measurement for the duration of the article. If you want to use metric tons then please put the cost in dollars/ton or dollars/Kg. It makes it a little easier to comprehend and do the math in the head instead of calc.exe

Just a comment about mixing metric and imperial... that's what caused the Mars rover problem. When Ars is writing articles, would you please use one method of measurement for the duration of the article. If you want to use metric tons then please put the cost in dollars/ton or dollars/Kg. It makes it a little easier to comprehend and do the math in the head instead of calc.exe

I held back, but luckily my conversion software has metric ton to lb conversion.

You would think with all the money we have been pouring into ramjets and scramjets we would have a cheaper mode of sending payloads into low earth orbit. For as a milestone as this is in pop culture as an engineer its pathetic we are still sending things in space the same ways we have since the the beginning of the cold war.

If you can find a way to get into orbit that's more cost efficient than lighting off hydrocarbons and oxygen in a metal bottle and shooting the hot gas out of the end, and doesn't a) irradiate half the continent (nuclear rockets) b) involve reactants that will leave the pad a smoking crater if anyone sneezes (look up ozone as a oxidizer) c) leave a vapor trail of vicious toxic residue (look up fluorine tripropellant) d) require materials made from unobtanium or e) require an complete rewrite of known physics, let us know.

is there much to tell? i'd like to know more but it seems everything is a secret.

A lot of it is a secret but it does deserve a mention. Not only that, the program has been an astounding success. The X-37B vehicle has been in space for more than a year launched from an Atlas V.

There seems to be a heavy anti-government bias on Ars which I understand an am ok with, but it would help to report stories like those as well. Even the Boeing CST-100 underwent drop tests last month that were successful, which again I did not see anything about on here.

The Dragon/Falcon launch was awesome and I want to see more of it, but I would like to see more all of these stories. This is the future of this countries space travel and would like it covered in better not more sensational detail.

Just a comment about mixing metric and imperial... that's what caused the Mars rover problem. When Ars is writing articles, would you please use one method of measurement for the duration of the article. If you want to use metric tons then please put the cost in dollars/ton or dollars/Kg. It makes it a little easier to comprehend and do the math in the head instead of calc.exe

You would think with all the money we have been pouring into ramjets and scramjets we would have a cheaper mode of sending payloads into low earth orbit. For as a milestone as this is in pop culture as an engineer its pathetic we are still sending things in space the same ways we have since the the beginning of the cold war.

It's comparatively pathetic that our weapons boil down to little more than sophisticated ways to throw rocks at each other. We've got rocks that blow up, and others that make you glow in the dark. But, they're still pretty much just rocks.

More simplistically, why do we still use chains on things like bicycles? It's so....B.C. (literally).

A different way has been invented. Not one that's necessarily better or more efficient. Particularly the one about the chain. Not in over 2,000 years.

You would think with all the money we have been pouring into ramjets and scramjets we would have a cheaper mode of sending payloads into low earth orbit. For as a milestone as this is in pop culture as an engineer its pathetic we are still sending things in space the same ways we have since the the beginning of the cold war.

If you can find a way to get into orbit that's more cost efficient than lighting off hydrocarbons and oxygen in a metal bottle and shooting the hot gas out of the end, and doesn't a) irradiate half the continent (nuclear rockets) b) involve reactants that will leave the pad a smoking crater if anyone sneezes (look up ozone as a oxidizer) c) leave a vapor trail of vicious toxic residue (look up fluorine tripropellant) d) require materials made from unobtanium or e) require an complete rewrite of known physics, let us know.

There was the notion a few years back of using an variation of a ground-based rail gun. Linear accelerators come to mind as well.

Pcfllint3nt: IIRC Elon Musk pointed out that his propellant cost is approximately 0.3% of his launch cost last week. By going to reusable launchers, he thinks they'll take about a 40% payload hit. That still means that by going to reusable launchers they can get about two orders of magnitude reduction in launch cost.gmerrick: Huh. I've never really thought about that. Launch prices and payload to orbit costs are always quoted in metric nowadays, but the old-fashioned magical price point is $1000/lb, not $2200/kg. I guess we could redefine it to $1000/kg and make it tougher.Bad Monkey: Solid thermal nuclear rockets expel only superheated hydrogen. They don't irradiate the entire planet, but they do temporarily saturate the surrounding air with gamma radiation. That's not a problem for cargo flights, but the reflected radiation (off the air) would require shielding for passengers flights. A third-stage NTR has no such problem, since it starts where the air is thin.Eva01: When I can work the CST-100 into a story, I do. In this case I combined topics, figuring that way I'd get more readers. On your other topic, I think I might consider (and this is my opinion) Constellation/SLS to be "anti-government", since it ultimately wastes money on an expensive project without a mission. Ultimately the large amounts of money spent damage people's faith in our government, since we demonstrably didn't receive anything for the money spent. Successful, cost-effective programs like CCDev (so far) are pro-government, because they restore our faith that government can still aggregate capital and spend it wisely.Ostracus: the only problem with ground-based rail guns is that one has to find a way of dealing with air in front of what's being launched. Works well in a vacuum!

Pcfllint3nt: IIRC Elon Musk pointed out that his propellant cost is approximately 0.3% of his launch cost last week. By going to reusable launchers, he thinks they'll take about a 40% payload hit. That still means that by going to reusable launchers they can get about two orders of magnitude reduction in launch cost.gmerrick: Huh. I've never really thought about that. Launch prices and payload to orbit costs are always quoted in metric nowadays, but the old-fashioned magical price point is $1000/lb, not $2200/kg. I guess we could redefine it to $1000/kg and make it tougher.Bad Monkey: Solid thermal nuclear rockets expel only superheated hydrogen. They don't irradiate the entire planet, but they do temporarily saturate the surrounding air with gamma radiation. That's not a problem for cargo flights, but the reflected radiation (off the air) would require shielding for passengers flights. A third-stage NTR has no such problem, since it starts where the air is thin.Eva01: When I can work the CST-100 into a story, I do. In this case I combined topics, figuring that way I'd get more readers. On your other topic, I think I might consider (and this is my opinion) Constellation/SLS to be "anti-government", since it ultimately wastes money on an expensive project without a mission. Ultimately the large amounts of money spent damage people's faith in our government, since we demonstrably didn't receive anything for the money spent. Successful, cost-effective programs like CCDev (so far) are pro-government, because they restore our faith that government can still aggregate capital and spend it wisely.Ostracus: the only problem with ground-based rail guns is that one has to find a way of dealing with air in front of what's being launched. Works well in a vacuum!

You would think with all the money we have been pouring into ramjets and scramjets we would have a cheaper mode of sending payloads into low earth orbit. For as a milestone as this is in pop culture as an engineer its pathetic we are still sending things in space the same ways we have since the the beginning of the cold war.

If you can find a way to get into orbit that's more cost efficient than lighting off hydrocarbons and oxygen in a metal bottle and shooting the hot gas out of the end, and doesn't a) irradiate half the continent (nuclear rockets) b) involve reactants that will leave the pad a smoking crater if anyone sneezes (look up ozone as a oxidizer) c) leave a vapor trail of vicious toxic residue (look up fluorine tripropellant) d) require materials made from unobtanium or e) require an complete rewrite of known physics, let us know.

There was the notion a few years back of using an variation of a ground-based rail gun. Linear accelerators come to mind as well.

Those have the unfortunate tendency to turn their human contents to mush, unless you don't mind making it 300 km long or so.

Bad Monkey: Solid thermal nuclear rockets expel only superheated hydrogen. They don't irradiate the entire planet, but they do temporarily saturate the surrounding air with gamma radiation. That's not a problem for cargo flights, but the reflected radiation (off the air) would require shielding for passengers flights. A third-stage NTR has no such problem, since it starts where the air is thin.

I'm sold. I read up on the "nuclear lightbulb" design years ago, in fact, and fell in love with it. Good luck selling everybody else on it though. We have enough problems trying to get a couple dozen kilograms of plutonium off the ground in nigh-impenetrable containers, can't imagine how hard it will be to get an honest-to-FSM "nukular rocket!!!" off.

You would think with all the money we have been pouring into ramjets and scramjets we would have a cheaper mode of sending payloads into low earth orbit. For as a milestone as this is in pop culture as an engineer its pathetic we are still sending things in space the same ways we have since the the beginning of the cold war.

If you can find a way to get into orbit that's more cost efficient than lighting off hydrocarbons and oxygen in a metal bottle and shooting the hot gas out of the end, and doesn't a) irradiate half the continent (nuclear rockets) b) involve reactants that will leave the pad a smoking crater if anyone sneezes (look up ozone as a oxidizer) c) leave a vapor trail of vicious toxic residue (look up fluorine tripropellant) d) require materials made from unobtanium or e) require an complete rewrite of known physics, let us know.

There was the notion a few years back of using an variation of a ground-based rail gun. Linear accelerators come to mind as well.

Those have the unfortunate tendency to turn their human contents to mush, unless you don't mind making it 300 km long or so.

That pesky instantaneous torque, when you don't have rubber wheels to act as a slipping clutch.

Pcfllint3nt: IIRC Elon Musk pointed out that his propellant cost is approximately 0.3% of his launch cost last week. By going to reusable launchers, he thinks they'll take about a 40% payload hit. That still means that by going to reusable launchers they can get about two orders of magnitude reduction in launch cost.gmerrick: Huh. I've never really thought about that. Launch prices and payload to orbit costs are always quoted in metric nowadays, but the old-fashioned magical price point is $1000/lb, not $2200/kg. I guess we could redefine it to $1000/kg and make it tougher.Bad Monkey: Solid thermal nuclear rockets expel only superheated hydrogen. They don't irradiate the entire planet, but they do temporarily saturate the surrounding air with gamma radiation. That's not a problem for cargo flights, but the reflected radiation (off the air) would require shielding for passengers flights. A third-stage NTR has no such problem, since it starts where the air is thin.Eva01: When I can work the CST-100 into a story, I do. In this case I combined topics, figuring that way I'd get more readers. On your other topic, I think I might consider (and this is my opinion) Constellation/SLS to be "anti-government", since it ultimately wastes money on an expensive project without a mission. Ultimately the large amounts of money spent damage people's faith in our government, since we demonstrably didn't receive anything for the money spent. Successful, cost-effective programs like CCDev (so far) are pro-government, because they restore our faith that government can still aggregate capital and spend it wisely.Ostracus: the only problem with ground-based rail guns is that one has to find a way of dealing with air in front of what's being launched. Works well in a vacuum!

Very true, there is still some money to be saved using these methods and it has only been a couple of years since Space X has been around. But with Elon's attitude about making things happen, i have high expectations of the aerospace aircraft that could be used. Space is the next wild west in my eyes. We just need a gold rush for everyone to see it. (Including the people who like to mention how hard something is in order to justify doing the same old *looks to statement below*)

Aside note, it seems like Bad Monkey has been relying on Fox News for their science information